#CF and tbosas Good

[ladysophiebeckett]

micheal arndt cowrote both catching fire and tbosas. that's why the blurbs were like 'this is the best hunger games movie since catching fire'. he's probably the one that gave snow the 'look at them holding hands, i want them dead' line.

[allthethoughtsandstuff]

reread the hunger games in the most fucked up order this year

may: mockingjay

november: the hunger games

november: tbosas

december: catching fire

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

I watched TBOSAS today (Sunday) and I’m sadly not very well (bad cold or flu), but I wanted to try and make a little post to appreciate the film/give my thoughts.

I saw the first three Hunger Games movies on opening weekend during my teens - the only one I didn’t watch at the cinema was Mockingjay Part 2, because it coincided with my GCSE mocks and some other stuff I had going on. I saw the first one twice at the cinema, once on opening weekend with one friend and then a second time with my then-best friend a few weeks later; I saw CF and MJP1 with my younger sister on opening weekend because it’s one of the few series we both love and so it’s one of the few things we can both enjoy together. My point is that I’m a huge THG fan, have been since I read the first book in late 2011 when I was 13 - I even still have my Mockingjay pin that I bought in March 2012 from Waterstones that I still wear!

Anyway, I read TBOSAS during lockdown, my sister bought the book and let me read it after she did, so this has been one of my most anticipated movies of the year!

!Spoilers below!

I was ill when I watched it and I’m even iller now but I’ll try to remember as much as I can

I LOVED IT

I’m glad they made Coriolanus Snow hot because I felt so conflicted watching him and that’s EXACTLY what was needed for the character, he’s got this beautiful exterior but he is POISON inside

Rachel Zegler was AMAZING by the way, I’m not her biggest fan by any means but I say fuck the haters

Hunter Schafer as Tigris was AMAZING casting, she really needs to shine away from Euphoria because damn she was so good in this film

Just in general casting ATE in this movie; Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman etc

Tigris was spot on: “I wouldn’t sing a note for you” and pointing out that Coryo needed to get Lucy Gray’s trust in order to help her win

Arachne Crane deserved death, idc 🤷‍♀️

NO ARACHNE FUNERAL LIKE THE BOOK?!?

The fact that the tributes were just dumped in a zoo and put on display like animals?!? Compared to six and a half decades later where the tributes are glammed up and treated like royalty, even allowed to train before entering the arena??? I love how starkly different it is

I won’t lie, Lucky Flickerman stole the film whenever he was in the scene 😭😅 absolute scene stealer?!?

Lucky trying to cancel his dinner reservations on night 1 of the games because “this is taking longer than I expected” 💀

Also telling one of the mentors not to puke on the floor after their tribute was killed?!?! Iconic really

“Those drones really are not very good” - PLEASE 😭

You can definitely tell Lucky is an ancestor of Caesar lol

The bow and arrow when Coryo enters the arena?!?! 👀🏹

Coryo killing Bobbin was BRUTAL. He could have stopped after the first hit, that was self defence - but he carried on and kept hitting him. It was definitely a huge moment

I obviously knew Wovey wasn’t going to survive, but god DAMN it 😭 DID THEY HAVE TO MAKE HER SO SWEET AND LIKEABLE?!? She just wanted to go home, and those were her last words before she was killed by the snakes 😭

Coryo really cheated just so Lucy Gray could survive, and it still has me questioning whether he cares for her or if it is just to do with the Plinth prize? 🤔

“What are the Hunger Games for, Mister Snow?” And all I can think about was him explaining in the original HG movie why there’s a Victor, why they don’t just kill 24 kids at random:

THE SNAKE SCENE IN THE ARENA WHERE LUCY GRAY SINGS?!? ASDFGHJKL THIS IS CINEMA

The Games felt so much more primal and sad, like you could tell all of them were just trying to survive, even Coral who seemed to target Lucy Gray ruthlessly but then before her death made the comment that it can’t have all been for nothing…

The fact that Gaul didn’t want to call an end to the games even though Lucy Gray was the final survivor, and it was only when the other mentors were chanting to let her out, to call it, that she finally did it…

I nearly lost my shit during the first hanging scene because I suddenly remembered that THIS was what the Hanging Tree song was based on; “they strung up a man they say who murdered three” “dead man called out for his love to flee” etc. And that is EXACTLY what happened, right to a tee: the man protesting his innocence, calling for his love to go…

Listen I may be REALLY off, but the meadow where Coryo and Lucy Gray met up again… is it the same meadow from the final scene in Mockingjay P2 with Everlark and their kids?!?

It probably isn’t but it reminded me of it idk

THE KATNISS PLANT - FORESHADOWING 😭 “it’s not ready yet” “things change fast” ASDFGHJKL

SEJANUS PLINTH YOU HAVE ALWAYS DESERVED BETTER 😭 knew it was coming but I was so sad

The scene where they hang Sejanus was so chilling, because the birds (i think they were Jabberjays and not Mockingjays but I could be wrong?) repeated his blood curdling calls for help as he was hung, like I was so haunted by it afterwards

No wonder Coriolanus Snow hates the fucking birds, Jesus Christ

THE CABIN AND WOODS SCENES?!?

The absolute tonal shift when he finds the guns, when Lucy Gray remarks that she’s the only loose end as if it’s a taunt, a challenge etc.

Coriolanus running through the woods, screaming “AFTER EVERYTHING I HAVE DONE FOR YOU?!?” - it just SCREAMS toxic relationship quite frankly, like whether you believe there was any genuine love at all or not, it just screams how toxic the relationship was between them. It was doomed from the start frankly

I was so concerned that the film would make it clear whether or not he killed Lucy Gray, but thankfully they left it ambiguous just like the book. Did one of his bullets hit her? Did she fly free?

It’s so interesting that Lucy Gray and her games were completely and utterly wiped, there was no trace of them - but her songs, her art, survived even after she disappeared. Songs like the Meadow song and the Hanging Tree survived and were passed on through District 12, becoming part of their culture - Snow couldn’t destroy that, no matter how hard he might have tried

Someone on Twitter made this comment and I agree:

Also YES, I noticed that Tigris called him “Coryo” until their last scene together, and then it was “Coriolanus” 😭 and also the fact that she warned him not to turn into his father, his father had hate in his eyes… and then at the end, she sadly tells him “you look like your father, Coriolanus” 😭

The small little hints of the man Coriolanus Snow is in the original series though??? The roses, the Katniss plant Easter egg, etc. And then there’s the fact we see glimpses of what later became his preferred method of killing his enemies - poison. He put poison in the compact and gave it to Lucy Gray, and then he poisoned Casca Highbottom… it’s just so fascinating to think of who this young 18 year old becomes later on, the way he changed over the course of the next 64 years and how those changes came directly from what happened in this story.

Ending the film with Donald Sutherland’s delivery of “It’s the things we love the most that destroy us” from the original movies?!?! FUCK YEAH I WAS THIS CLOSE TO SCREAMING

Honestly it’s got to be VERY hard to play a younger version of a Donald Sutherland character, but especially this one because that man KILLED the part in the films, but I think Tom Blyth did a really good job and I could definitely see hints of the older Snow being included in his performance, like I could genuinely believe it was the same character?

The fact that 64 years later a dark haired girl from District 12 wearing a mockingjay pin and singing songs once sung by a girl he thought dead absolutely fucked his life up?!? We love to see it. It’s like Lucy Gray gave him a middle finger lol

I’ll be honest, as soon as we left the cinema I said to my sister “the only thing is now I want to watch the original four Hunger Games movies” 😭

That’s all I can think of right now because I’m very feverish, I’ve got work in the morning and it was also a long film so there was a LOT going on, but I absolutely LOVED IT. The Hunger Games has truly been the only franchise that has a prequel that has been nearly universally loved and accepted by the fans, Suzanne Collins is truly amazing.

[bibbibib]

What's your favorite character from all across THG trilogy & TBOSAS?

Why do you like this character?

Favorite quote or moment from them?

Please state one (or more) thing which you don't like from them.

Thank you 😊

@curiousthg

Hi anon!

So here I am going to be basic and say that to me, it's a tie between Katniss and Peeta.

There's plenty of characters across the books I like, and also several I find fascinating, but I love these two in particular. I love how Katniss, for all her skill and bravery and the heroic colours she's being painted with, is first and foremost a realistic 16 year old girl, who kids herself, has insecurities and fears, and feels like a real person and not a stereotype. It isn't a particular thing I like about her, but rather how the combination of her traits creates something ordinary in its extraordinariness, without treating her characterisation and development as an either-or. I love how she is hesitant and scared of romantic relationships, how she can be grumpy and lets-get-it-over-with and at the same time endlessly caring, how her emotions are complicated and her interests across the board. As for Peeta, a lot of the same things apply to him also - lets give a round of applause for Suzanne's characterisation - but some specific things that stand out to me is his steadiness and resillience and his quick mind that presents in a way that is more sweet than biting. I love kind characters who aren't naive.

I think a favourite moment of mine that includes both of them is the compliment battle in THG. Also the cheese buns-training period in CF. I love to read their bantering together. Katniss' narration throughout the book has a lot of moments that have me rolling, and I think I'd really enjoy anything from Peeta's POV if Suzanne had written it, what with his humour and way with words and all.

As for things I don't like about them, this is a rare case where I don't really want to say anything about that. Do they have flaws as people? Absolutely, and there's several points where I disagree with their actions, but I feel all of them are neccessary for them to be good characters. So I'll let those pass.

[samzier]

are u reading the hunger games books or have u seen the movies? :0 i've read some books but i've never seen the ending or the movies

THANK U FOR THE ASK ! i have read all of the books (thg and cf twice), and seen all of the movies multiple times since the beginning of july…… i have issues. the hyperfixation hit me like a truck imm in the trenches. The movies also led me to have a josh hutcherson fixation as well so hooray for that

ANYWAYS you should totally finish the books if you ever get the chance!!! Theyre so so good and although mockingjay is an extremely sad read the ending makes up for it. plus tbosas giving us a first hand account of Snows past adds so much to the narrative and world building of panem/thgs history. genuinely amazing books with great movie adaptions as well!! if u dont get around to the books ending i suggest the movies which are less time consuming :3 ironic because despite being lengthy theyre just fairly condensed versions of the books, however the films still do them justice for the most part (besides the fact that they dont include MADGE UNDERSEE 😢 very salty abt it, i love her)

SORRY TO RAMBLE this made me very happy.,.. HAVE A FANTASTIC DAY ANON! <3

[enobariasdistrict2]

Since when do you like THG/TBOSAS? Tell me your fandom story 😊

Have you read or watched all the books/movies?

Thank you.

@curiousnonny

OMG HEY BESTIE happy to answer these. i apologize because i can ramble a lot so this MAY get long.

SO that is actually an interesting story (to me at least haha). i don't remember the explicit details, but in like seventh grade i bought the hunger games books at some point which is weird because that's not something i'm usually interested in/drawn to so idk how that happened, and i brought them with me on my family trip to seattle over spring break. i didn't touch the books on that seattle trip because we were really busy, then we get back and literally all hell broke loose with covid and i got to skip school for a year because of virtual school. SO then i read the books some time after spring break (and then tbosas later on because it came out recently then too) and i was like. "hey. hey wait a minute. these are actually amazing books." i was absolutely fucking obsessed and ENTHRALLED like. back then i wasn't a fan of katniss or the love triangle (it wasn't an obnoxious "not like other girls" phase thing, i just didn't really truly understand katniss at all) but i was OBSESSED with the trauma and her narration and the worldbuilding and the plot pacing and the strategic placement of all these insane minor characters/plot twists/arcs. my favorite book was catching fire because it was such a different and good vibe from the original book and had finnick odair in it. then i became a clato fan because i saw clips of isabelle fuhrman and alexander ludwig playing those characters on youtube which made me invested in these two minor secondary antagonists that i previously hadn't cared about (on my first read the cato kneels beside clove line didn't even register for me XD) and i saw her death scene and i was like "hey shouldn't cato be like begging her to stay alive/trying to save her" and the rest was history after that. my clato/general thg/tbosas love of eighth grade faded after high school started, but then got renewed after i watched the bosas movie (truly excellent actually) and got inspired to reread the books. i fell in love with everlark and realised how amazing they were/how far gone they are for each other. i kind of went from everlark to hayffie, bouncing around but eventually circled back to clato.

i have absolutely read and REREAD all the books, as well as watching the movies. i watched the movies sometime in middle school after my first read but i don't remember much. i think i randomly rewatched cf on netflix in freshman year out of boredom but didn't reinvest in the fandom until after the bosas movie came out.

[alanfromrochester]

TBOSAS book review

Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Incredible Hunger Games background

The movie coming out inspired me to finally get around to the book and I went though it very quickly. That's the sign of an engaging story generally, and one thing I like as an adult reader of YA is straightforward prose making a good story a quick read.

This was a great prequel for background on the main timeframe - as such it works best if you already know the original series as a basis for comparison. I feel Star Trek Enterprise was also like this with the Star Wars prequels being more standalone (though enriched by knowledge of the original)

I figured President Snow took a hard line against rebels because of his family suffering in the first rebellion including his father being killed, canon agrees and expands upon this - material suffering due to the rebel siege and much of the Snow family wealth being in District 13. It also seems like a sort of abused becoming abuser dynamic. For example, antizionists tend to feel Israel is using antisemitism as an excuse to mistreat Palestinians. (That example probably comes to mind with Gaza being major news in late 2023)

Old money falling on hard times seems not uncommon in nobility fiction, so does conflict with new money. Kid not interested in the family business is also an old story.

Dr. Gaul being a mad scientist seems to push him further to evil. Near the start of CF, Snow tells Katniss the Capitol needs to maintain its grip else what follows will be worse; in general, the events surrounding the 10th games really stuck with him over six decades later.

We see a lot of the rest of the Capitol elite - many names are familiar, including a Flickerman who sounds much like Caesar. We also see how the Peacekeepers operate, including on the job training for common recruits rather than a centralized boot camp. Some of Snow's barracks life feels like general parts of military fiction. Coriolanus and Sejanus doing better in training than lower-class recruits made me think of ASOIAF/GOT when Jon joins the Night's Watch. Much of what we see of District 12 life is quite familiar as well.

I also suspected the pomp and circumstance of the Games developed over time and this was confirmed as well. People uninterested in the Games because they recognize the brutality of it showed decent human nature corrupted by being cajoled or forced into watching it, in contrast to Gaul viewing the species as violent and in need of control. In general, I feel THG is a great combination of distract-with-luxury dystopia in the Capitol and brutal suppression dystopia in the Districts. This fits with Suzanne Collins' inspiration of flipping between 'reality' TV and Iraq War coverage.

Since the nature of the Games changed over time, other elements of the Capitol of the main series timeframe might also be different.

Apparently the average Capitolite, even the upper class like young Coriolanus, is not aware of the true fate of District 13.

The haphazard original nature of the Games highlights the Quell cards seeming like a later embellishment rather than original plan including the 3rd being rigged to re-reap Katniss.

Snow did snitch on Plinth, but Sejanus being outspoken was bound to get him in trouble anyway, and I understand Snow not wanting to be dragged down with him. Snow planning to knock some sense into him is helping in a way and assuming daddy would just throw his money around again was a tragic misunderstanding. Sejanus' righteous but foolish hotheadedness does sound something like Gale. No wonder Lucy wants nothing to do with him after that, like the final break between Gale and Katniss at the end of Mockingjay - to whatever extent it is or isn't his fault, she understandably is emotionally offended.

[rosaaeles]

hellooo! new follower here! I was wondering if you could tell us what your stances on the The Hunger Games movies are? and thoughts on the new TBOSAS movie announcement? very curious!

hey anon!

my stances on the movies are..... HMMMMM

on one hand, i adore the cinematography of THG and CF. in terms of what is physically happening on screen, the first movie in particular is beautiful and poignant and there are so many scenes i love (e.g the opening scene with seneca and caesar, the cornucopia scene, katniss putting flowers around rue's body, her tracker jacker hallucinations). imo the cinematography is one of the strongest qualities the first two movies have going for them. the last two are generally a disaster and i think thats due to a bigger budget and the fact that they feel like blockbusters - they lack the intimacy of movie 1 so i generally find them more boring visually etc etc.

i also think some of the casting was good! namely josh hutcherson as peeta and elizabeth banks and effie. sam claflin was good as finnick and donald sutherland was a fab snow too imo. (stanley tucci as caesar as well! he nailed the balance between the flamboyancy of the capitol and it's more sinister side.)

movie 1 means a lot to me, and it always will so i watch it often BUT that is not to say it's not without fault.i have a lot of problems with the franchise and so it's hard for me to love the movies as much as i think i could.

i don't like the casting of jlaw, liam hemsworth or woody harrelson. and it's nothing against their acting, tbh. it's more about the fact that i have a serious problem with lionsgate saying that only white ppl could audition for the roles of katniss, gale, and haymitch (and greasy sue too which??? weird). i've said this before but by preventing non-white actors for those roles in particular, the filmmakers depoliticised the story to an extent and missed out on a chance to address the idea of "seam" being a race alongside it being a class (i'm just brushing over this topic rn bc whilst it's something im deeply passionate about, i don't want this to become another essay about THG and race bc lord knows i've bored so many people with my ramblings rip :')

beyond that, i'm not too keen on how many of the book's themes were ignored or glossed over. finnick's SA and the fact that he was forced into prostitution by snow, the capitol's hoarding of resources, the nuances of being a career, the careers in the 74th games planning to torture katniss etc etc. these are just some of the examples that im reeling off the top of my mind, and they're topics that are barely shown in the movies.

what i'm trying to say is that there was an opportunity to make such a beautiful franchise that accurately reflected the books and didn't shy away from the heavier themes or the symbolism in the books, but instead we got movies/marketing that focused on "team gale/team peeta" and "what district would you be in?". it frustrates me immensely bc an opportunity was missed!

okay phew let me catch my breath.

in terms of TBOSAS, i don't trust lionsgate to not fuck it up so i'm just very cautious about it all honestly. i want to believe they'll learn from the mistakes the last movies made and improve on them but we'll just have to wait and see! i'd love for lucy baird and sejanus to be played by non-white actors, i'd love to see a return to visuals reminiscent of the first movie and i'd love for the filmmakers not to shy away from heavier themes! but idk how likely any of these things are so i'm just keeping my fingers crossed!

sorry this got so long, anon! i hope it answered all your questions!

[petruchio]

well to be Fair donald sutherland also understood the assignment. not quite the vibe i imagined, though -- he was a bit more Obviously Menacing in the movies rather than a polite/pleasant/understated politician with some scary undertones. which was also something that really worked in the books! you expect this massive confrontation between snow and katniss, but it's quieter, it's unnerving in a very different way. when snow says "it is fragile, but not in the way you suppose" in the books, he leaves it at that, and it makes you wonder what's really going on. there's a lot of tension! but in the cf movie, he's immediately like "now suppose everyone in your district was killed!" what's that about? where is the sense of the capitol performing Restraint while also perpetuating terrible things? his performance was really good, but these changes in the script were so weird to me

ok yes i will agree with this take because generally speaking i agree that donald sutherland did a good job! my irritation with snow in the films stems from the same place yours does, namely the script, because while i understand WHY they did all the cuts to snow and seneca crane in the first movie, i will always wish that we stayed with katniss the way we do in the books so that snow becomes more and more of a presence over time rather than us getting up close with him right from the start. i think his development from a faceless villain to an extremely present and complicated manipulator throughout the series (and into tbosas but we don't need to get into that NOW) is a great arc, and i think really holds the reader's hand and takes them along on a similar journey to katniss in terms of how her journey in terms of realizing the strategies and manipulations of her oppressors. but again -- i UNDERSTAND why the choice was made to center snow from the start, because that transition would've likely been far less clear in the language of film and i understand the need to explain wtf is going on in the capitol when we don't have katniss's narration to help us.

BUT YEAH he did give a great acting performance

[ellanainthetardis]

Hello hello! I know you mostly ship hayffie, but everlark is a recurring pairing in your fics aswell. Have you ever given your thoughts on the whole hijacking route that the author took with Peeta? I would also like your thoughts on if you think we were robbed of an everlark reunion and Peeta adding to the rebellion. For me personally, I think it was an unnecessary twist that was created for shock factor. Then again, that seemed to be the theme of MJ.

Hi! Honestly I need to do a re-read this year. It’s one of my goals for 2021 because I think between fanfics, hcs, the movies etc the actual canon details are not that clear. I started rereading after I read TBOSAS and abandoned it quickly because Katniss is not my favorite narrator. So bear in mind, I may be fuzzy on the actual details and opinions are, of course, subjective. 

I don’t really hide the fact I don’t like MJ (and not only because she forgot about Effie until halfway through). I think MJ is the books where we really see Collins struggle with the 1st person pov she chose in the beginning because it’s a huge story that is not exactly confined to Katniss specifically and, as a consequence, the story and the world building take a serious hit. Nothing is clear, the timeline doesn’t really make sense for such a war, it ends up being a succession of actions by Katniss that are drops in the ocean of the war... 

In you compare, on that front, TBOSAS was a better book because the third person pov allowed for more building, more information... In MJ, the story stops to be really about Katniss, it’s about Katniss and the rebellion, about Katniss and Panem... And it’s just too huge to work, all the more so when she’s an unreliable narrator in the first place. It’s one thing I liked about the 2 MJ movies, it actually did a good job at representing the scope of the war, at broadening it past Katniss herself... 

So that’s my basis to answer your question, haha. I already have problems with the form, now for the twists... I don’t really mind the highjacking storyline because I think it’s an interesting one. At the end of the book, they both have their own trauma to overcome, their own handicaps - Peeta ends up with the botched memories, the episodes and the missing leg, Katniss ends up deaf in one ear, with an addiction (under control but it will probably be a lifelong struggle) to morphling, abandonment (her mother, i cannot let that go sorry i know she’s popular in the everlark fandom but I can’t forgive her for not sticking with her) and they both have to deal with grief for their dead family members/friends. That adds a certain... symmetry? Otherwise it would be Peeta taking care of Katniss, living for Katniss, like it had been mostly in CF so I think the highjacking allows some sort of balance in their relationship because it’s also what Katniss needed in MJ to actually face her feelings and accept that she loves him (for real). That she needs him. That she, basically, wants him. She has a thick head, okay, it takes a while for her to catch up XD

If you take the highjacking away and you add Peeta to the rebellion from the start... I think you get a very different story (not necessarily a bad one and one I’m sure fanfic writers have explored a lot) but that does mean that the themes would be different. First and foremost that means the scam of the star-crossed lovers would have continued so Katniss would have never really been able to deal with her feelings/not feelings for Gale in a proper way because we would have been in the same situation as in CF where the act would have had to be maintained for the rebellion’s sake. That also takes out all the angst about half the victors captured in the Capitol because, to be honest, while we do love them through years of exposure and reading about them, I’m not sure how much - at first read - anyone would have really cared for Annie and Jo. It would be sad, yeah, but they sure wouldn’t have sent a team to rescue them. And Finnick would have had less page time because Peeta would have been there. 

What I think was for shock value, as you mentioned, is sending Peeta to the Star Squad toward the end of MJ. I think it was meant to reunite everlark and top the angst as much as possible because all the “youngsters” are in danger at that point: Gale, Finnick, Peeta, Katniss... So you know, from countless previous books, one of them is likely to die and you angst about it. It’s an arena, you know there’s going to be a death (Finnick is the worst written death in the history of ever, it’s another topic but I felt the need to say it again, sue me over it I will be defending my opinion to the grave). I’m not really sure why it was important to have Peeta there aside for the whole Peeta/Gale talks. And it also doesn’t reflect well on Coin’s strategic mind. She was hoping they would kill each other, sure, but... Getting rid of Kat and then using Peeta as a prop seemed much clever... But hey I’m not the writer here XD

So, to sum up, I’m not unhappy about what was done with Peeta in MJ, it’s a twist yes but it’s a twist that works toward building a good healthy future relationship for everlark. It doesn’t rank on the top 5 of what annoys me about MJ haha.